


Les Revenans (Those Who Return)

by lost_in_a_good_book



Category: Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Genre: Angst/Comfort, Backstory, Ceremony, F/M, Gloves, Lovers' Reunion, Slice of Life, kind of borders on hand porn but no actual sex, sense of touch, vampire foreplay but no biting or blood, world building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 04:27:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9304121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_in_a_good_book/pseuds/lost_in_a_good_book
Summary: There is great meaning in the removal of gloves and the touch of each other’s hands, Eve thinks, once Adam invites her across his threshold.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [antarctic (ohargos)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohargos/gifts), [indiefic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indiefic/gifts), [Pear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pear/gifts), [alby_mangroves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alby_mangroves/gifts).



> A Treat for the New Year’s Challenge 2017.

Eve always had liked the way Adam performed the entrance ritual; with her, he followed the customs of the era in which he’d been turned. (They still disputed, jesting, whether to call that the very late Middle Ages or early Renaissance.) The core ritual was as old as their kind. But she felt his version preserved the old chivalric ideal of respect between male and female, from the world before that notion vanished for many centuries.

The familiar ritual also drew her husband back to her, centering him when he’d spiraled away into his own darkness. She hoped it would pull him back this time and watched him carefully for signs of its effect.

It gladdened her that, unlike his usual present-day posture, slouched and sprawling, now he stood tall and bore himself most gracefully. After they inclined their heads in _la reverence,_ she looked to him; he raised his hand and offered it to her, saying huskily, “my lady.” She gently placed her hand on his, then he escorted her forward as if they were leading a stately procession. At the top of the steps, she felt him pause. Her role was to proceed, however, and she advanced before him across the doorsill.

She stopped and scanned the details of his entryway. Wood paneling glowed in pools of warm lamplight, as if the candles or torches of the past illuminated the hall. The warm light dispelled the gloom that could lurk in the corners of old houses such as this. Here, instead, his familiar clutter filled the hall’s nooks and crevices. Mismatched small tables held samples of his interests; she noticed a book here, a stack of LP records supporting a lamp there. And, of course, he would still have that carved gargoyle she disliked. The grotesque lump now was perched on the bottom post of a railing.

It was a good sign that he had let her look about, not rushing her. Smiling slightly, she turned back to him, for the ritual next required _la cerimonie des gans._ Raising her gloved hands, her palms facing towards him, she asked, “May I?”

Although he always gave her his assent, the formal question and response acknowledged again the love and intimacy between them. It was especially important that the two of them perform this _cerimonie._ They did not experience the same sensations when they touched, and she knew they needed to realign themselves to each other.

She was one who took in beneficial energy through her fingers, especially when touching something that was new to her. Wearing gloves, when beyond a threshold of their kind, kept her from excessive stimulation if she should connect with and draw in too much.

He instead was one who absorbed harmful energies if he touched things that were unfamiliar or displeasing to him – what in his era she had called _quelqun qui peut estre devourez._ This trait made him frightened of even brushing against something that might affect him, she’d learned. Wearing gloves seemed to control his fear of being swallowed up by the contaminated “zombie shit” that, he said, was everywhere outside.

When they’d first met, she sensed she’d captured his interest. But she knew that she’d gained his full trust when he at last touched his gloveless hand to her bare fingers.

He reenacted that moment with her whenever they rejoined, making of it far more than mere formality. It was a welcome that she only would perform with him, and that he would provide only to her, their prelude to a deeper intimacy.

Many decades ago, he had stopped answering her “May I?” aloud. Instead, to her continuing delight, he simply took her right hand in his left, gracefully turning her palm upward. Then he caressed the back of her hand with his fingers; she felt the pressure through her glove as he slowly stroked from her fingertips down to her wrist.

She watched this wide eyed, entranced by the sensation of his touch after being so long deprived of it; and she admired the precise movements of his hand. (Those hands, with the long fingers of the musician he had always been, had caught her notice all those centuries ago.) That he showed his continued great trust, by putting his unprotected fingers on her well-worn glove with its leather grimy from her travels, reassured her.

As she continued to watch, his stroke reached her wrist; he grasped her firmly there while he put his other hand to the fingertips of her glove, then quickly drew it off her. Her lips parted and she looked up at his face; it showed great passion as he brought her exposed hand to his mouth and fiercely kissed her palm. Then she felt him start to trace her lifeline with the tip of his tongue.

With her eyes fixed on his, her fingertips against the roughness of his cheek, she could sense so many things from him: desire, loneliness, love and deep respect, despair and delight jumbled together. She knew that he so longed for connection, on every plane. Yet he had separated himself from her by great distance and hidden himself away in this deserted urban wilderness.

She yearned to comfort him with more of her touch – to pull him in close, brush his long unruly hair back into place, and kiss him. But before she could draw his head down to her lips, he gently lowered her hand from his face; though as he did so, her fingers trailed over his mouth.

He turned, slowly, to focus on her other hand and its glove. She thought it boded well that he could govern himself at this point and continue the _cerimonie._

He kept her bare hand captured in one of his, as she observed his other hand turn over her still-encased one. He always seemed to know what would pleasure her: for this time he grasped the full length of her fingers with his own and pulled the glove firmly upward to expose her hand. Transfixed, she kept her newly freed palm cupped just as he had left it, an offering to her liege lord.

In their past courtships, he would have tucked one of her gloves into his garments, she remembered, claiming it for a lover’s token. Now, the claim long established, with a frown of impatience he tossed her gloves aside; they landed atop his own, lying on a bench by his door. She noted the slight fracturing of his self-control, but they had almost completed the ritual.

She felt as though he wanted to devour her, so intense was his gaze. But Adam again raised his upturned hand and held it out to her. Eve curved her wrist and delicately placed her hand in his palm, where it tingled.

He wrapped his long fingers around hers; then she let him lead her slowly and most gently up the stairs to his bedchamber.

 

 _Love came,_  
_and moved like blood_  
_in my body._

_It rushed through my veins_  
_and surrounded my heart._

_Everywhere I looked,_  
_I saw..._  
_Love's touch._

 _Love's touch:_  
_on my left palm..._  
_on the tips of my fingers..._  
_Love's touch...._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Many, many thanks to my beta reader untherius!
> 
> The prompts requesting more about Adam and Eve’s background led me to explore their use of gloves. The director, Jim Jarmusch, has said that the gloves were the film’s “arbitrary contribution” to vampire lore, as protection for the vampires’ hands when they’re outside their home or habitat. I wondered what they might be protecting themselves against, and the meaning of removing their gloves when crossing someone’s threshold.
> 
> At the movie’s debut at the Cannes Film Festival, the press packet described Adam as being about 500 years old. That would mean he was born and turned during the reign of Henry VIII of England, at the very end of the medieval age of chivalry.
> 
> The French terms are spelled as they commonly would have been in the Middle Ages. The modern French word “revenants” has sometimes been used as another name for vampires.
> 
> I was inspired – by some of the film’s music (the lute, at once both medieval and Middle Eastern), and by the director’s use of quotations as shown in some of the deleted scenes – to use an excerpt from a poem by Rumi. The closing quotation is from “Love’s Touch.”
> 
> This is my just my second fic, so helpful feedback is welcome!


End file.
